Get Sandwich collaborated with TEDxStockholm to prepare for their event “Lighthouse” in late November. It was the biggest TEDx event even held in Sweden, from mynewsdesk.com:

With seven speakers and an audience of over 800 people, Lighthouse will be the biggest TEDx event ever held in Sweden. The event was sold out record-wise and in various forums people are now trying to get tickets desperately.

On November 25, seven talks will be held in the TEDx spirit in the hall of Nobelberget, Nacka in Stockholm. The event is called Lighthouse to brighten up, spread ideas, and steer us towards a brighter future. The event, with over 800 seats, was sold in record time and thus also becomes the biggest TEDx event ever held in Sweden.

Lighthouse will be about the past and future of music, how the new generation of millennials change the workplace, how data can not only explain but also make individuals dare to break glass roofs, how imagination can not be defined by usability and pragmatism and how to keep it alive, What AI can offer for education, what you can learn by crossing the Atlantic in a rowing boat and how to restructure its home to save on Earth’s resources.

The event was a major success and in this post, we explain how we worked with TEDxStockholm behind the scenes to make the event the one to be remembered.

Before Sandwich

TEDx Stockholm’s Speakers Team invest a lot of time and effort to increase the quality of speaker’s performance by assigning one, or two coaches for each lucky speaker. They also involve the whole TEDxStockholm team by collecting feedback in content and delivery rehearsals from everyone. This is a laborious process of back and forth between each pair of speaker-coach and the wider TEDxStockholm team.

TEDxStockholm is a relatively large non-profit organisation with over 40 volunteers. Although most of them are based in Stockholm, finding a time where everyone can physically meet is challenging.

After Sandwich

When the Speakers Team started planning the rehearsals, they wanted a more centralised location where the whole team could easily reflect and feedback on the speeches. In the past, the rehearsals weren’t filmed and the feedback was recorded on a gigantic google sheet (they were very organised). This time, all rehearsals were collected in a video library on Get Sandwich. Then coach used the library to review what to keep and what to change for the next time and give better guidance to the speaker.

Caption: Milestones in our collaboration.

We customised the platform to suit the exact metrics they looked for in the final performance. Hint: some of them involved asking if the idea was worth sharing! The metrics guided everyone who gave feedback to pay more attention to specific areas such as the voice (volume, pace) and the body (stage movement, gesture). These are constructive things speakers were able to easily pick up and improve upon.

For the content rehearsal, we focused on four ratings and for the delivery rehearsal, we focused on six. Having more ratings would mean giving feedback will take too long and less productive for the entire rehearsal process.

That’s a lot of feedback

The content rehearsal was held in October. During the meeting, the platform collected a total of 123 feedback responses for seven speakers. For the delivery rehearsal in November, we collected 71 feedback for four speakers. Some speakers who were not able to attend the live rehearsals had the option of sending their videos instead. In the past, it was much harder to distribute these videos and make them easily accessible.

Caption: Feedback was essential for all these rehearsals.

We have next year to look forward to

Sigita Zvirblyte, TEDxStockholm’s Head of Speakers Team, said, “With Get Sandwich, we’re able to get more and better quality feedback for our speakers, and it is easier for coaches to identify attributes that should be improved. The user-friendly interface helps to keep the rest of the team engaged during the rehearsal process.”

TEDxStockholm is the first TEDx we have worked with and we are very grateful for that. They are tremendously professional and thoroughly committed to the mission of TED: Spreading Ideas Worth Sharing.

Here is a photo of all the wonderful speakers, proud of the worthy ideas they have spread to the world.

Caption: The grand stage of TEDxStockholm with all the participants. Looking fabulous. Copyright: TEDxStockholm.